1.What is the purpose of this website?

First and foremost, it’s an online notebook,a sketchpad, a memo. It’s really more for me than anyone else. I have a labyrinthine memory (and that’s not a compliment by any measure) and I often need to look up past writings to remember what I have said and how I have said it. I don’t like repeating myself, and if there’s ever a reason for me to shut up, I find a legion of people rallying behind me to do so. If I based d332.com on generating income, I’d probably be broke by now. On the way, I try to help spread postings and announcements about trans activities and trans news. However, since I’ve been out of the loop in the past few months, my trans-activism has been noticeably down.

I do notice many transgender websites devote a large portion of their writings to being transgender, becoming transgender, or all things transgender. I’m glad for those sites, as they provide invaluable online resources for those of us who have questions and want to research those who have proceeded ahead of us. This site is not one of those sites. My hope is that d332.com will diversify the spectrum of what it means to be transgendered…which is, absolutely no different than what it means to be a well-rounded (hopefully) human being, with all its faults, passions, prejudices, joys, curiosities, failures and accomplishments. Though one part should never represent a whole, I feel that in the unfortunate instance when people incorrectly view an individual to represent a group, they may think that transgender people only blog about their hormone dosage and trips to Thailand. Hopefully, my site will add a different dimension to transgender representation.

2.Why do you post pictures in your Photo Gallery?

I consider pictures timestamps and memory aids of what I look like at a particular time. It helps me be conscious of just how quickly time and life is passing by. It’s one of those things that if you don’t look into the mirror, one day, you’ll wake up and find out it’s all going to be over shortly. If people enjoy looking at them, then I’m glad. There are also people who collect pictures of highway milemarkers. There is a similarity between these activities.

3.You are very critical of many things in both your community and your country of residence. We need more support not criticism.

One of the things I have come to realize about the internet is that even though most of us may elect to ignore blogs, opinions, and Amazon reviews; ultimately, the ones who vocalize their views will mark a presence online. Those who don’t temporarily (or permanently) disappear from the map. Here’s an example: Gay men are stereotypically viewed to be cosmopolitan and flambouyant because those are the ones who are visible and identifiable. Does that mean then there aren’t gay men who are content leading slow, insulated, provincial lives? Does it mean that there are no farmers who think of the warmth of another man? Since they are not visible, nobody ever thinks about their existence. Up till Brokeback Mountain, it probably never occurred to a large number of heterosexuals that cowboys could ever have gay thoughts.

It’s not that we need to think about the many different types of transgender people out there. It’s simply the notion of familiarity that enables the isolated individuals out there to realize they are not alone, and that it is possible to be different and still be different. Vocalizing my views is a way to add another voice to the trans presence and expand our collective identity, a way to show that there are other interests in one transgender person’s life apart from transitioning, monthly hormone dosage, do’s and don’t’s of trans-dating and a full justification of why personal decisions were made. It would be ideal to have a large cross-section of society represented as trans-identified. I’m against white supremacists and homophobes, but it would invariably help the perception of transgender people to have homophobic and racists transgender people (believe me, they exist. Scouts honor!) represented online.

To see the full spectrum of transgender people will help dispel the notion that we, as a group, act, think, and behave as a monolith.

4. I don’t know you, but can I share your clothes? Can you feminize me? Can you help me dress? I’m a beginner, can you teach me?

You can pay people to help you put on makeup and let you try on the clothes in their closet.. I am not a service.

5. Do you go out dressed?

Always. When there is a reason to. If I go out with long time friends, casual friends, boyfriend, and sometimes family members. If I’m out doing dull boring chores however, there’s really no need to be draped to the height of fashion. The Christian Dior New Look hourglass with the S curve silhouette in a two piece suit when buying two packs of Japanese tofu is a bit much.

6. Have you ever been harassed in public?

No. Alone, with someone else, or in a group. Once in a long while, people may have snickered or mumbled a remark. I’m not sure whether I was the topic of discussion but If they can’t say it to my face, it doesn’t count.

7: What ethnicity are you?

90% Chinese. The other 10? may be Japanese, as there are no records of where my dad came from, and indigenous Chinese people have often mistaken both my father and I to be Japanese. Born in Georgetown, Penang. Thirty Years in the US. Only been to China once in my life for educational purposes, but have recently made up my mind never to go again.

8. Aren’t you promoting discrimination against women by lauding chauvinistic, take-charge men?

Although I am greatly appreciative whenever feminists include transwomen in their call for equality, I think it’s safe to say that no one will look at what I do or say, and subsequently rethink their perspectives on the equal treatment of women. No one could possibly read d332.com and walk away saying, “she speaks for all women” or “she speaks for all transwomen” for that matter. At the same time I am not one of those flaky individuals who claim I am being ironic and my statements and behaviors are clever, sarcastic commentaries on the antiquated patriarchal society. I would be positively horrified to see genetic women get run over by men if that was not something they desired, which is most of the time. At the same time, we have to remember there are women out there who feel comfortable being bossed around by men, letting the man take charge. They just don’t attain the same visibility as feminists. The concept of choice is based on your freedom to chose, it is not about being bullied into having the same ideals as everyone else.

9. Do you like role-playing?

I have an intense dislike of role-playing. A perfect summation of all the things I find wrong with role-playing can be seen in 2008’s movie CHOKE, when Heather Burns as Gwen- the internet date- rattles off an endless set of rules to Victor for their s/m play-r@pe role-playing. If you are a nice, kind-hearted fellow, then I’d be delighted if you remained one. If you are a possessive, ruthless, alpha-male, SOB who likes 24-7 HOH (head of household) micro-managing of his girlfriend, that’s okay with me too. Just don’t try to be something you are not. It reeks of phoniness.

I am NOT into the S/M scene. I read the writings of the Marquis de Sade when I was young. I was electrified by the daring of Pasolini’s Salo, and have a greater appreciation of it now that I am acquainted with the writings of Pierre Klossowski and the menu of Mickey-D’s. But the salutation of “master” or “mistress,” all those whips, ball-gags, latex, ropes and chains tell me one thing: if you need all these superficial tools to assist you, you really don’t have true power over that person.

10. Do you date transwomen, transgirls, or genetic girls?

No. I dated only men when I was dating. (I am currently in a full time relationship with a man). I started dating men in my early twenties. I have no desire to date women or transwomen. I have even less than no desire to date men who like to dress, or men who like to try on women’s clothing. I have nothing against it. It just doesn’t do anything for me.

11. Are you post-op?

No. I don’t plan to do anything with the main plumbing. I think a woman’s anatomy is a gorgeous work of art. I also think that a man’s anatomy is equally beautiful. To modify that part of me, in my opinion, would be like taking a knife to one of Gorgia O’Keefe’s paintings. It would be like dumping a can of Pollock’s paint onto a Vermeer.

12. Are you on hormones?

No. I have heard that hormones disturb one’s sex drive. It may or may not impede mine, but I am not willing to take that chance. One’s sex drive is the lifeforce that frees one’s creative imagination. I have no issues with my organ. I play piano.

13. What are you into?

Stepford Wife, which should never be confused with the docile, love-you-long-time, mail-order brides. The former is out of choice, the latter is necessitated by the desire to obtain a U.S. citizenship, which, when achieved, is usually followed by a summary discarding of the husband. I have been in the U.S. since a child. If anything, moving out of the United States would be a grand idea.

14. Do you pass?

Probably not. The giveaway is my height. I am a few millimeters shy of 6 feet tall without heels. If people chose to look closer, they will probably see something. If they just go about their business, they probably won’t. Having said that, there’s been this observation that many supermodels tend to have androgen insensitivity, which means a Y-chromosome alongside a mutated X. That’s why they are so tall, and sometimes slightly masculine looking. Whenever I think about the plight of my height, I console myself by remembering the time I saw Kamila Szczawinska walk down 8th ave. in NYC. She towered above every man on the sidewalk, and she actually looked prettier in real life than all the super-retouched Vogue magazine ads I’ve seen her in.

15. What type of men do you like?

In the Jean-Paul Satre play Dirty Hands, Hoederer says, “I, I love them (men) for what they are. With all their filth and all their vices. I love their voices and their warm grasping hands, and their skin, the nudest skin of all, and their uneasy glances, and the desperate struggle each has to pursue against anguish and against death.” As long as they wear men’s clothes, I always manage to find quite a few interesting things about all the men I come across. I have mentioned how chauvinistic men, as a soon-to-be-extinct anachronism, fascinates me greatly.

16. Why do you like pink so much, is it because it’s girly?

Actually my love of pink originated from my love of a beverage in my childhood. It’s an ice-cold, milky, sweet, drink filled with the scent of Pandan leaves. It is called Rosewater Ice Milk. Sure, pink is girly, and that’s a fun perk. Hello Kitty is also pink. My electric guitar is also pink. But I wouldn’t love something just because it was girly. If I did, I wouldn’t have such a dreadful time telling an episode of the Hills from Gossip Girl, or Beyonce’s songs from Hannah Montana’s. At this point, I can’t even tell the difference between American Idol and Billy Idol.

17. Are you a Top or Bottom?

Not that it’s any of your business, and one should be able to arrive at a conclusion from my passion for the Stepford Wife, conservative role of helpmeet. But just to stop a question from being frequently asked: Nonversatile bottom.

18. What outfit epitomizes your look best?

For an accessory: the ribbon. For an outfit, the matronly schoolmarm librarian outfit. For anything below, there can only be one: the garter belt with stockings.

To the trans girls out there looking for a look: transgender is sometimes so much about copying what other people do (other biological women, other women friends, other fashion models, other role models).

Don’t appropriate my style. Seek out your own, try out what works and doesn’t work for you. Distill, improvise, create, and you too, can be proud to arrive at an image that you can call your own.

19. What’s the deal with this whole Stepford Wives thing?

The idea of the submissive, obedient, meek and quiet woman is a complete fabrication of the male imagination. I know this because for years, another male fabrication – the idea of the submissive, obedient Asian mail order bride – has been creating thousands of unhappy- sometimes mysteriously dead – white husbands. You could argue that biblical foundations in the creation of Eve from Adam’s Rib made women owe allegiance to men, but that doesn’t explain Lilith, who was also created out of dirt before Eve, by God, to provide companionship to Adam. She found Adam to be a bore when he was too prim to go in through the out door, told him to f***-off and high-tailed it out of Eden. God then sent a couple of his wiseguys to take out Lilith, but she threw them off the trail by sinking a blow-up doll with concrete slippers into the East River. When they went to the ledge to check it out, she rolled his goons with a sockful of quarters, got away and married a Chasidic camera salesmen in midtown under a new identity. Of course, if you believe in Dumb Design (also known a “Science”), you could then argue cavemen, with greater stamina and strength hunted and gathered, so without cavemen, cavewomen would go hungry. But that’s why women invented vegeterianism and became lesbian farmers who then told men to sod off.

The very story of Ira Levin’s Stepford Wife, written at the height of the ERA movement, was founded on the allegory that the submissive wife is a construction (literally) of men. I minored in Gender Studies (it was called “Women’s Studies” back in the 1700s when I was going to college) and see no logical reason why women should be obedient to men. At the same time, since I believe my identity is my personal creation- a male creation, and that mindlessly mimicking the behavior of real women amounts to cheap forgery (it doesn’t help that I am of the nationality that currently holds the greatest notoriety for counterfeiting), I decided to embrace and explore instead, the male-created version of woman as wife, the Stepford Wife.